126 THE PRAZOES 



Let us now turn to the Sugar plantations, the 

 most important industrial undertakings hitherto 

 attempted on the Zambezi. There are actually 

 three of these, as I have previously stated, but as 

 tv(^o are situated on the south bank I will endeavour 

 to give some description of the first estabhshed, 

 the Mozambique Sugar Company. 



This association, which has been founded nearly 

 twenty years, although Portuguese in its composi- 

 tion, is managed and directed chiefly by British 

 employes, and occupies itself exclusively with the 

 cultivation of sugar-cane, the manufacture of sugar, 

 and the distillation of alcohol. Situated at Mop^a, 

 on the left or northern bank of the river, about 

 ninety miles from the coast, it had under cultiva- 

 tion in 1906 nearly 3,000 acres — but a small 

 fraction of its enormous concession. Nearly half 

 this acreage of cane was cut in that year, but in 

 1907 about 1,000 additional acres were planted 

 out, whilst the cane harvested yielded rather more 

 than 3,000 tons of sugar, valued at over £70,000. 



The product is marketed in Lisbon, where, 

 conveyed by Portuguese ships at a merely 

 nominal freight, it is admitted on a payment of 

 half the customs dues collected upon sugar pro- 

 duced by other countries, equal to a bounty of 

 about £12 per ton — an interesting and instructive 

 lesson in Portuguese Colonial Preference. 



To obtain such a result as the foregoing — a by 

 no means too satisfactory one, since it was hoped 

 in 1907 to reach an output of something over 

 5,000 tons — several things are necessary : the ex- 

 penditure of large sums in costly machinery. 



